Category Archives: Germany

One of the most disheartening aspects of the war against Jihad is the parade of self-defeating and truly idiotic policies that Western nations have concocted while our heroic warriors and first responders attempt to defeat our enemies and defend us against their attacks.

Here we have a prime example.

A 37-year old German national who fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan from 2013 until February of this year, when he was captured by US and German special forces, has been convicted by a German court for being a member of a terrorist organization.

So far so good, but it gets bad from here.

First of all, the Jihadi was sentenced to…6 years in prison. SIX YEARS IN PRISON. He fought for the Taliban for 5 years, yet he only gets a 6 year prison sentence…

Here are some of his activities while he was in Afghanistan for 5 years:

prosecutors said he prepared explosives, got ready for a suicide attack and worked on a propaganda video aimed at German radicals. He also allegedly had himself filmed participating in a failed mortar attack on an Afghan army base

For this he gets 6 years in prison.

And here’s another outrage:

The terrorist has only been identified as “Thomas K.”

Why?

German privacy laws forbid his full name being disclosed.

GOOD GRIEF.

In 6 years (or possibly even sooner) “Thomas K” will be released from prison and no one outside of German intelligence and criminal justice will have any idea who he is.

Finally, note also that Thomas K has resorted to what recently has become the favored deflection for Jihadis who have been captured. He’s pulling the “Crazy Card,” claiming he was schizophrenic and depressed…

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office has issued a dozen identically worded advisories for European nations.

The nations for which the advisory was issued are Poland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, and France.

The advisory text reads:

“May be increased security in place over Christmas & New Year period, including at Christmas markets & other major events that might attract large crowds; remain vigilant & follow advice of local authorities”

It’s worth mentioning that there is no reference whatsoever to what has caused this advisory to be issued. The answer of course is Islamic jihad. Acts of violent jihad, particularly individual acts of violent jihad, have become part of the European landscape over the past decade.

In addition to car bombings and firefights, there are vehicle rammings, seemingly random acts of knife jihad, sexual assaults by roving gangs and acid attacks.

This violence has escalated with the onslaught of so-called “migrants” into Europe from Islamic-dominated regions of the world, notably, southwest Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa.

As a result, a new aspect of Christmas has appeared. To go along with peace on earth and goodwill toward men, in Europe we now have barricades surrounding Christmas celebrations, heavily armed soldiers in full kit always close to Santa and Nativity scenes and the occasional attack.

There is something that was left out of the UK Foreign Office advisory:

There was no mention of the UK of course, which is understandable because the Foreign Office only handles foreign affairs, not domestic policy.

On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the United Kingdom is under the same intense threat from jihad as the 12 European nations mentioned in its dispatches. But who is issuing advisories for travelers to the UK?

The U.S. news media has been almost completely entranced by the pontificating and posturing at the conventions of its two major political parties the past week or so. This has prevented them from covering the fact that events overseas demonstrate that the global Jihadist movement is NOT on its heels and NOT on the run. Nor is it contained.

First, on Thursday, 21 July, a British airman narrowly escaped an abduction at knifepoint outside Royal Air Force Station Marham. That particular base is home to a RAF squadron of Tornado bombers that deployed to the Middle East and conducted air strikes against the Islamic State.

The RAF airman was jogging along a road near the base when he was accosted by two men driving a vehicle along the same road. Fortunately, he was able to fight off his attackers who then fled. The attackers were described as “Asian,” which is a horribly misleading British media euphemism for Middle Eastern or Pakistani/Indian, and NOT Oriental as most people associate with the term Asian today.

The British military has been on alert for an attack against personnel inside the UK since Fusilier Lee Rigby was beheaded outside Woolwich barracks, in southeast London by two Jihadis.

There are now reports that the vehicle driven by the two attackers was observed making “dry runs” near the base before the attempted snatch operation.

Jihadi communiques have mentioned this type of attack repeatedly and the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have both issued calls for attacks on military personnel in the West and for attacks using knives and other edged weapons.

Then, on the same day, it was announced that Brazilian authorities had arrested 10 people in an apparent plot to carry out an Islamic State-inspired attack on the upcoming Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.

The group of ten were described as a “disorganized cell” that was communicating with each other online to plan attacks. The Brazilian federal police moved in on the Jihadis when they began to make plans to purchase firearms.

While the media has sought to downplay the significance of this development, it should be pointed out that 10 “disorganized” people with firearms can create a lot of death and destruction.

The federal police are concentrating their monitoring on the infamous “tri-border” region that we have covered before. This is a nearly lawless region with a large Muslim population which has been known to be a haven for HAMAS, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda members in the past.

The lawless “Tri-Border Area” in South America

In a related development, a Brazilian Jihadist group calling itself “Ansar al-Khilafah Brazil” pledged allegiance to the Islamic State last week as well, signaling an intention to target the Olympics, which are defended by 85,000 police and military personnel.

In addition, the SITE Intelligence Group reports that Jihadists have been broadcasting advice for individual Jihadis via social media and mobile devices to carry out attacks during the Olympics, including the use of toy drones.

As if all this was not enough, the world’s attention then swung to Germany, where a series of 4 attacks has initiated that country into the group of Western nations targeted directly by individual Jihadi attacks.

The first attack came on 19 July in the form of an axe attack on train passengers, not unlike the Jihadi attack in Queens, New York in October 2014:

The attacker in Germany was a 17-year old Afghan refugee. Three people were injured in the attack and the Afghan Jihadi was shot dead by German police.

Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, who attacked passengers on a German train on 19 July

But the Jihadi violence was not over in Germany. Even before the next attack however–and we believe that this is significant–the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a travel advisory for Germany, warning that the threat of terrorism in Germany “remains high and further attacks are likely.”

What did the Australians know that the rest of the world was ignoring?

Within a few hours of the Australian bulletin, the news broke that shots had been fired at a shopping center in Munich.

After much initial confusion, it was discovered that a German-Iranian had killed 9 innocent victims and wounded 16 others with a pistol.

German authorities are still trying to distance this attack from any Jihadist motive, but their efforts are almost sure to fail. Multiple witnesses claim they heard the shooter shout “Allah u Akbar” during the course of the attack. The fact that the shooter was unknown previously to German security and intelligence services and was not a member of a known terrorist group is of no comfort whatsoever in this new age of individual Jihad.

Moreover, there is some evidence to indicate that the Germans are just plain wrong about the shooter, one Ali Sonboly.

Munich Shopping Mall Shooter’s Facebook Page

Note that the image above prominently features the Turkish flag, not the Iranian flag and at least one observer makes the point that Sonboly was probably Syrian, not Iranian…

Again in Germany, yesterday, 24 July, a Syrian refugee carried out a machete attack outside a kebab restaurant in Reutlingen, Germany. Once again, German officials downplayed any possible Jihadist motive in the attack, which left a 45 year old Polish woman dead. But the fact that it occurred in the midst of a rash of similar attacks and that it involved an edged weapon, something the Islamic State has specifically recommended in communiques, is beyond merely suspicious. Reports linking the two romantically do not explain the other two individuals the Syrian wounded in the attack.

The dead victim of the machete attack in Germany on 24 July 2016

Fortunately a good samaritan driving a BMW ran over the machete wielder before he could make his escape.

Then, just hours after the machete attack, an Islamikaze bomber set off an IED outside a music festival in Ansbach, Germany, killing himself and injuring 15 others. Once again, the attacker was a 27-year old Syrian refugee. He had tried to gain access to the music festival but was refused admission. He then set off his bomb. Had he been able to get into the music festival, casualties would almost certainly have been greater.

This time the German officials could not deny the Jihadist motive. A search of the man’s living quarters and belongings uncovered a video in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and the Islamic State’s media arm, Islamic State Amaq, confirmed the attack as a martyrdom operation carried out by an Islamic State soldier in response to its calls to target the Western coalition fighting against it.

Germany is still on edge and its Interior Ministry has ordered increased security for airports and train stations (but not music festivals or restaurants evidently).

If all this was not enough, the most horrific Islamic State attack of all came on the 23rd of July in Kabul, Afghanistan, where 3 Islamikaze bombers attacked a protest killing 80 and wounding 236…

We can only hope that the elected leaders here in America recognize the frenetic pace of Jihadi activity worldwide and realize their duty to make defeating Jihad the number 1 national priority.

At some point America will come to a crossroads on this same issue. If a mosque is found to be involved in material support for terrorism in the US, it should NOT be protected by the 1st amendment of our constitution.

And make no mistake, it is in fact in the mosques that recruitment and organization for Jihad is occurring. Despite what the so-called mainstream media’s narrative claims–namely that “radicalization” occurs simply over the internet and social media–an honest review of history indicates that it is mosques that serve as the outposts for Jihad around the world.

There is evidence to support this.

In France this week, security agencies shut down three mosques. One was in Lagny-sur- Marne, a suburb of eastern Paris. Nine Muslims associated with that mosque were placed under house arrest and 22 others from barred from leaving France.

According to USA Today, in that investigation, police seized a 9mm handgun, a computer hard drive that was hidden behind a wall, as well as jihadist propaganda materials. Police also discovered documents about an unregistered Quranic school.

In addition, two other mosques, one in Gennevilliers in the northwest suburbs of Paris and one in Lyon, were closed by French police. Moreover, four Muslim “prayer rooms” in the Nice area in the south of France have also been shut down. It is worth noting that these so-called “prayer rooms” are very common throughout the West and are often operated in strip malls and in store fronts and private homes.

The Germans have been shutting down mosques for a few years now and, as of yet, they haven’t been hit by a Paris or Brussels-style attack.

Back in December, they shut down a mosque in Stuttgart that was involved in recruiting for the Islamic State:

“Through the association, donations have been collected for terrorist groups and fighters recruited for the Syrian conflict. In addition, the association and its members glorify jihad and religiously motivated terrorism.”

The German police confiscated computers, data storage devices, cell phones and documents in that raid.

In December 2014, the German police shut down a mosque in Bremen on charges that it too was recruiting for the Islamic State.

But the most notorious mosque in Germany was probably the Al-Quds Mosque in Hamburg. That mosque served as a meeting place for some of the September 11th hijackers and was finally shut down in 2010 after German authorities uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to launch terrorist attacks across Europe. Several members of the mosque had been recruited to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train to participate in Jihad.

Contrary to what you may read or hear from pundits here in the U.S., the role of mosques in the U.S. is not much different from what we have seen in Europe.

The first indication of that came back in the 1990s as detailed in the book “Willful Blindness” by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. That book details the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as “The Blind Sheikh,” who preached at three different mosques in the New York area. Educated at the prestigious Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, Rahman issued a fatwa in the U.S. that declared it lawful to rob banks and kill Jews in the U.S.. His sermons condemned Americans as the descendants of apes and pigs.He called on Muslims to assail the West, cut the transportation of their countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land.

Rahman recorded his sermons in Brooklyn on cassette tapes and sent them to Egypt as the spiritual leader of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a Jihadist terrorist group based there.

Rahman was eventually convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.

This was certainly not the only example of an Imam preaching Jihad and recruiting for Jihad at a mosque.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a U.S.-born Imam who went on to become the head of AQAP–Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Before that, however, he served as an Imam at the Denver Islamic Society (where he was caught encouraging a member to travel to Chechnya to fight the Russians), the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque in San Diego, as well as the notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque near Falls Church, Virginia, where he preached to at least two of the September 11 hijackers and an Army doctor named Nidal Malik Hasan, aka the Fort Hood shooter.

Anwar al Awlaki. This New Mexico native became the Imam of choice for Al Qaeda, essentially leading the organization’s operations in Yemen.

Al-Awlaki fled the US after serving as the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University and actually delivering sermons to the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association at the U.S. Capitol. He met his demise in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

Then there is the case of Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, also known as Omar Shafik Hammami. He grew up in the quiet gulf coast town of Daphne, Alabama, served as the president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of South Alabama and went on to become a Jihadi fighter with Al Shabaab in Somalia. While this man was not an Imam himself, it is extremely suspicious and interesting that his father, a Syrian immigrant, served for a time as an Imam in Daphne as well.

Omar Hammami of Alabama

Another case in which the son of an Imam became a Jihadist terrorist is that of Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, the son of Gulshair Muhammad el-Shukrijumah, the Imam at the notorious Masjid Nur al-Islam mosque in Brooklyn, who made a career on the payroll of the Saudi government preaching Islamic supremacism and Jihad. The elder el-Shukrijumah also preached sermons at Masjid al-Farooq mosque in the same area of Brooklyn, which served as the religious base of operations for Ramzi Youssef and the other 1993 World Trade Center bombers. After all of this activity, the entire family moved to Florida where the elder Gulshair served as Imam at the Masjid al-Hijrah mosque.

Former Florida and New York resident Adnan Shukrijumah

The younger Gulshair did not follow in his father’s footsteps as an Imam preaching and recruiting for Jihad. He decided that joining Al Qaeda was the way to go. He rose in the ranks of Al Qaeda before being killed in a counterterrorism raid in Pakistan in December 2014.

It should be pointed out that the Imam fathers of these Jihadis denied any knowledge of how their sons could have found their way into Jihad…uh huh.

Finally we have the case of Carlos Bledsoe, also known as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, named for his Imam as the Islamic Center of Nashville, who was recruited for Jihad in Nashville and sent to Yemen to a Jihadi training camp, before returning to the U.S. to murder U.S. Army Private Andy Long in Little Rock, Arkansas, as depicted in the movie “Losing Our Sons.”

If you haven’t seen that movie, you should, especially for the audio and video footage of Imams at mosques preaching violent Jihad.

What all this means is that Jihad isn’t just happening over the internet and social media. The French and the Germans evidently are starting to understand that, according to Islamic doctrine, mosques are not the same as churches in the West. In addition to places of worship, mosques are also the equivalent of the town hall, court house, school, community center…and the national guard armory.

Will our own bureaucratized counterterror apparatus ever wake up to this reality?

Too much is made of the Islamic State’s widespread use of social media to recruit Jihadists to its barbaric savagery.

The fact is, the social media wouldn’t be effective as a recruiting tool if there wasn’t a foundation in Islamic doctrine for Jihad in the first place. And the contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture occurs most often in mosques.

Though federal elected and appointed officials are in complete denial about it, mosques have been used as recruiting centers, planning locations, safe havens and even armories for Jihadist terrorists around the world for years.

France has recently targeted mosques with ties to violent Jihad and Germany is too.

Until Americans come to terms with the fact that activities such as Jihad are not entitled to protection under the 1st amendment to the US constitution under religious freedom, we will continue to see an escalation of Jihad attacks here.

The Islamic State is not simply an Iraqi problem or a Syrian problem. IS has metastasized into a worldwide organization with 20,000 recruits from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Germany. Even worse, Jihadists from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyef in the Philippines, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northwest Africa and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen have all pledged allegiance to IS.

There can no longer be any doubt that the global Islamic insurgency that some have been warning about for some time, amounts to a world war. Nevertheless, policymakers here in the U.S. continue to ignore or deny this reality.

Over the period of a generation, the West has allowed itself to be thoroughly infiltrated by a savage and barbaric belief system. This is evidenced by the global base of recruitment that the Islamic State has been able to take advantage of and the numerous public displays of support for IS in the West.

The terror alerts issued by the US State Department, Interpol and the foreign offices of Great Britain, France and Germany should worry Westerners very much.

US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen

If there is indeed specific information about a credible threat that closed down US embassies in 22 nations, grounded 6 international airline flights (so far) and resulted in the most serious global travel advisory put out by the US State Department in several years (covering an entire month) then it is an indication that Al Qaeda is not only NOT “on the run,” but is evidently more prolific than ever in terms of its reach.

Under such circumstances, it’s not a question of “if” Western targets will be struck again, but “when.”

We have been lied to about the magnitude and scope of the Jihadist terrorist threat. That is the unmistakable conclusion.

Some cynics and skeptics seem to think that the whole issue has been contrived by the Obama administration for political purposes, but this makes no sense at all.

Obama has repeatedly declared victory over Al Qaeda. He essentially declared that the killing of Osama Bin Laden placed the terrorist organization on the ropes and all but announced an end to the war on terror, complete with a re-orientation of the US military toward a significantly smaller force primarily focused on the Asia-Pacific region.

Moreover, his policy of drone strikes was supposed to have decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership structure.

Apparently none of what Obama told us was correct.

So for Obama now to use that same terrorist threat to improve his political fortunes makes no sense at all.

Think about it: So when Obama repeatedly says Al Qaeda is on the run and for all practical purposes defeated—-it’s regarded as propaganda for the masses. And then when the State Dept issues a global travel advisory and closes 22 embassies because of a threat from Al Qaeda, that’s also propaganda for those same masses?

It doesn’t add up. I think Obama lied about Al Qaeda in the first place. It was in his best interests to remove a major national security threat from the public sphere and, with the aid of a compliant media, he successfully did so. But it was never anything more than words on paper and talk in pretty speeches.

Al Qaeda isn’t on the run. They aren’t defeated. And this terror alert, unfortunately, isn’t phony.

The alert coincides with the end of Ramadan, a holy month in Islam in which America has often restrained itself in fighting Islamic enemies, but during which Jihadists have actually escalated their attacks. The closure of the embassies comes on the Ramadan “Night of Power.” Without getting into obnoxious detail about Islamic doctrine, all you really need to know about the “Night of Power” is that it was the day on which the USS Cole was attacked in Aden harbor in Yemen in 2000. And this is the same week during which the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in east Africa were bombed back in 1998.

So, when intelligence emerges suggesting that US targets will come under attack at this time, it is something to take seriously, especially given the fact that Al Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement in the past week instructing Al Qaeda’s followers to attack US targets now.

Perhaps the most significant evidence that this terror alert should be taken seriously comes from the fact that France, Germany and Great Britain have all shut their embassies in Yemen down as well and issued travel advisories to their citizens. Unless they’re in on some scheme to help Obama’s approval rating, my guess is there is a real threat out there.

German diplomatic post in Yemen

Al Qaeda is real, folks. They’ve been real for decades now and they’re deadly. To assume otherwise is suicidal. To make matters worse, there is evidence to indicate that they are now as capable as they have been at any time since 1998.

Consider the fact that in the past month there have been large-scale prison breakouts in nine Islamic nations, including Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. The timing and scale of these breakouts in which mostly Jihadi fighters made their escapes, is unprecedented. Interpol suspects Al Qaeda involvement and coordination and has issued an advisory to that effect. On 22 July, 500 Jihadis, including senior level Al Qaeda operatives, escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Five days later, on 27 July, 1100 inmates escaped from a prison near Benghazi, Libya. And four days after that, on 31 July, the Taliban led a breakout from a prison in Pakistan in which an unknown number of Jihadis escaped.

Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq

These operations were almost certainly orchestrated and coordinated, most probably with help from the inside in each country. This was a massive undertaking that demonstrates Al Qaeda’s military as well as political power in the Islamic world. With so many Jihadis back on the loose, Westerners better brace themselves.

In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, there is a debate as to the extent that Bin Laden was operationally in charge of Al Qaeda. There have also been those who have naively speculated that Bin Laden’s death means an end to the war on terror or even Jihad altogether.

It seems apparent that Bin Laden was actively communicating with Al Qaeda elements, but it wasn’t in real time. He used a system of couriers to relay messages via email and the internet, but went to great pains to securely communicate. This means no direct internet connection and no phones, cellular, satellite or landline.

This would preclude any real dialogue with operators and cells. It seems as if Bin Laden was able to communicate in general terms about his “commander’s intent,” but was in no position to take part in detailed planning. Bin Laden wanted his followers to carry out mass casualty attacks, he wanted the attacks to occur on important anniversaries and holidays, and he was especially interested in attacks on trains, which is not hard to believe given that Jihadists have been targeting trains in the UK, Spain, France, Germany and India in recent years.

Unfortunately, what this probably means is that the loss of Bin Laden will not operationally hinder Al Qaeda. It may hurt the group’s morale and it may erode some of the group’s financial and moral support, but it might also energize those who seek to avenge Bin Laden’s death at the hands of US special operations forces.

Al Qaeda doctrinal leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri still lives and he has been by far more active in communicating in recent years than Bin Laden was. Anwar Al-Awlaki is still at large in Yemen and he has been the one who has successfully trained and inspired Jihadi attacks on US targets in recent years, such as the Fort Hood Jihadi murderer, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Underwear Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Little Rock Jihadist murderer, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (aka Carlos Bledsoe) and the unsuccessful plot to send bombs embedded in printer cartridges from Yemen to the US on board cargo and passenger airliners.

Muslim Brotherhood apologist Peter Bergen maintains that Awlaki is a small player and that the war on terror should end with the killing of Bin Laden, but this is hardly surprising that Bergen essentially built a career around Bin Laden, including perpetuating the illusion that Bergen himself was some sort of expert on Jihad because he had managed to spend a few hours with Bin Laden in a tent 13 years ago or so.

On top of all this, there is the additional issue of groups and organizations sympathetic to Al Qaeda and allied with Al Qaeda, but not actually part of Al Qaeda. Two significant organizations fall into this category: the Taliban and Lashkar e Taiba.

The Taliban need no introduction, but many people do not realize two things about the Taliban: Taliban leader Mullah Omar specifically declined to merge with Al Qaeda and refused to take an oath of loyalty to Bin Laden. Because of this, Bin Laden exercised no operational control over the Taliban. Second, the failed Times Square bomb plot appears to have been a Taliban operation, vice an Al Qaeda operation: https://terrortrendsbulletin.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/new-york-times-square-car-bomb-bulletin/

The significance of this is that the Taliban are willing and able to attempt terrorist attacks here in America. Adding to this worry is the recent news that six American Muslims, including Imams at a Florida mosque, appear to have been raising money for the Taliban: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387185/Imam-Florida-mosque-sons-arrested-charges-financing-Taliban-Pakistan.html Moreover, there is no ignoring the Taliban’s recent bombing attack against a Pakistani paramilitary training facility in northern Pakistan, which was declared as vengeance for Bin Laden’s death–with the promise of more to come.

Unfortunately, the slaying of Osama Bin Laden will have no operational impact on Taliban operations.

Then there is Lashkar e Taiba, the Pakistani Jihadi terrorist group which carried out the horrific Mumbai attacks. Again, this is a group that is often misidentified as an Al Qaeda affiliate, but, like the Taliban, LeT is a separate, standalone organization that declined to pledge any oath to Osama Bin Laden.

What does LeT have to do with America? Two things:

1. The Jihadist who conducted recon ahead of the Mumbai attacks was an American from Chicago named David Coleman Headley:

Members of the group fought against US forces in Iraq back in 2004. The group is known to have a presence in Germany and the UK as well.

These are just two examples of Jihadi organizations that pose a threat to America that will not be impacted at all by the death of Bin Laden.

Then there is the “lone wolf” threat, the so-called “sudden jihad syndrome” threat in which enraged Muslims commit acts of violence because they were inspired by organizations like Al Qaeda and people like Osama Bin Laden. There have been examples of this, the most recent being the case of a Yemeni-American who tried to storm the cockpit door of an American Airlines flight whilst screaming “AllahuAkbar!” Fortunately, the reinforced door was securely locked and there were a retired Secret Service agent and retired police officer on board who subdued the subject:

What of Al Qaeda itself? At least four Al Qaeda affiliates have either declared their intent to avenge Bin Laden’s death or issued veiled threats to carry on with the Jihad:

Somalia’s Al Shabaab, including Daphne, Alabama-born Jihadist, Abu Mansur Al-Amriki, mourned Bin Laden’s passing in a radio communication, confirming, incidentally, Al Qaeda’s role in fighting US forces in Somalia way back in 1993:

And, finally, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (which has been especially active in hostage taking in recent months and years) and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, both vowed to carry on with Jihad after Bin Laden’s death:

Hezbollah has not targeted Americans with terrorism in recent years, but they did take an active combat and advisory role against US forces in Iraq and they are believed to have a substantial presence inside the USA. Most recently, reports have once again surfaced of the group’s presence along the American-Mexico border:

What could touch off renewed attacks by Hezbollah? A confrontation with Iran for one.

The same can be said for the Palestinian Jihadist terrorist group HAMAS. Like Hezbollah, HAMAS is greatly dependent on Iran for financing, arms and training. Any confrontation with Iran carries with it the danger of HAMAS terror attacks. Many Americans do not remember that Palestinian terrorists used to target Americans with regularity. They stopped, not out of love for America, but to avoid being targeted by American power. HAMAS has the same basic goals as Al Qaeda and issued a eulogy honoring Bin Laden in which they bestowed upon him the honorific title “Sheikh:”

HAMAS is known to have conducted extensive fundraising inside America and, like Hezbollah, is believed to have a major presence inside our country.

So, we have no answers but certainly some educated guesses:

• Bin Laden was unlikely to have played an active operational role in Al Qaeda in recent times; most likely he was limited to expressing “commander’s intent” via intermediaries with little or no direct contact with operatives around the globe.

• The Jihad will of course continue. Jihad is not limited to a few groups and it didn’t commence on September 11th, 2001. It’s been going on for a millennium and is based on Shariah doctrine, not just the personal philosophy of Osama Bin Laden. Jihad, however, can be made dormant for a period through strong resistance since, according to Shariah, Muslims are specifically not supposed to wage Jihad if they are not strong enough to do so, therefore the situation is far from hopeless.

Al Qaeda and its affiliates have pledged to continue the Jihad and allied Jihadist groups still pose an independent threat above and beyond Al Qaeda. In fact Bin Laden’s death may ironically spur them to action. This says nothing of the threat from Jihadists that were not aligned with Bin Laden, such as Hezbollah and HAMAS, who pose an ongoing, if dormant, threat to Americans.

The New York Times has just published a piece in which more details on the decision to move in on the three Al Qaeda Jihadis are revealed.

It seems the men were in the process of building a bomb in their apartment…

The officials described a vast operation involving an intensive surveillance effort by more than 100 people and including assistance from American intelligence sources and the Moroccan authorities.

The German officials said they believed that the aborted attack was part of a strategy that Al Qaeda had been following to encourage homegrown terrorist attacks, now that the group had lost much of its ability to direct attacks from abroad.

Mr. Ziercke described the plot as a kind of hybrid terrorism that had elements of central control but left would-be attackers largely to their own devices.

One of the suspects, a citizen of Morocco who had lived for a decade in Germany, was recruited to attend a Qaeda training camp last year near the Afghan-Pakistani border, officials said. The suspect, identified only as Abdeladim El-K., 29, received weapons and explosives training and orders from a high-ranking Qaeda official, whom the authorities did not identify, to carry out an attack in Germany.

After re-entering Germany illegally in May 2010, Mr. Ziercke and other officials said, the suspect recruited two longtime acquaintances: men identified as Jamil S., 31, who has joint German and Moroccan citizenship; and Amid C., 19, who is a citizen of Germany and Iran.

While two of the suspects had Moroccan roots, the authorities said they had not found any evidence of a direct connection between the German plot and the bombing in Rabat. However, the men did appear to have been inspired by the attack, the police said.

The authorities said all three of the suspects worked full time on preparing for an attack, trying to conceal their activities by communicating in code and acquiring chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide and acetone that can be used in bomb production. They downloaded bomb-making recipes from the Internet and tried to extract chemicals for a detonator from a charcoal lighter.

The suspects also investigated security measures at possible targets like public buildings, airports and train stations, the authorities said. They stayed away from mosques and other places where they might attract attention.

The German officials who spoke on Saturday did not confirm news reports that the suspects planned to stage an attack during the Eurovision Song Contest, an international music competition that will draw large crowds to Düsseldorf from May 10 to 14. While taking note of the event, officials said the suspects had not yet settled on a target.

“They wanted to create an explosion in a place with big crowds of people,” said Rainer Griesbaum, head of the antiterrorism unit at the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe.

Mr. Griesbaum and Mr. Ziercke said there was at least one other suspect tied to the plot who had not been arrested, and that there might be dozens of others in Germany providing financial and logistical support to terrorist groups. The officials said they knew of about 200 Germans who had received training at Qaeda camps.

Like this:

German security authorities have arrested 3 Al Qaeda Jihadists of Moroccan origin who they say were planning to conduct terrorist attacks in Germany.

This report comes at the same time that Al Qaeda has renewed attacks in Morocco with a bomb attack at a cafe which killed 16 people.

Germany has thwarted Jihadist terrorist plots several times in the past few years, including a plot to bomb trains and train stations which came very close to fruition. German authorities have also closed mosques which have been tied to Jihad and Jihad recruitment.

In this latest incident, three men were arrested in the cities of Dusseldorf and Bochum, after having been under surveillance since November. According to German police, the 3 terrorists were planning attacks involving explosives. Though it is not known if Dusseldorf was the target, the city is scheduled to host a large music festival on May 14th.

No doubt, more details will become available when these men appear in court in the days and weeks to come.